It’s been a bittersweet few months for Paola Velez. The executive pastry chef can’t warm ovens at Kith and Kin to spin the tropical fruits of her childhood into stunning desserts that have national as well as local followings. She can’t caramelize apples for Haitian bread pudding or spoon passion fruit curd into a delicate puff or top elderflower snow with sweetened habanero peppers. The Wharf’s Afro-Caribbean restaurant closed in March as the coronavirus spread, furloughing employees to protect their health.
Velez spent the first weeks of quarantine at home. The 29-year-old posted recipes and dances on TikTok and Instagram, grew ginger from a root, and tended to thriving plants she says she normally killed.
Then, out of the pandemic’s uncertainty came a bright spot. The James Beard Awards named Velez a finalist for its Rising Star award—one of the most respected titles in the U.S. restaurant industry, in a category that doesn’t often honor pastry chefs. She’s in familiar company. Kwame Onwuachi, the chef and owner of Kith and Kin, won the award last year. The 30th annual celebration to announce the winners is, at this point, rescheduled for September. On the same day earlier this month, Velez was named a finalist for Best Pastry Chef at D.C.’s Rammy Awards, for the second year in a row. That celebration, currently scheduled for July 26, may also be postponed.
For a restaurant industry facing an unknown future, the recognitions are “a glimmer of hope,” says Velez.
“I’m proud and that doesn’t detract from anything that’s happened or that I’ve worked toward,” she says. “It’s a little bit somber and sobering, a reminder of what used to be.”
Velez has had close ties to restaurants for a long time. She was almost born in one. Her mother’s cousin owned Mary Ann’s, a handful of Tex-Mex restaurants popular in New York in the 1980s and 1990s. Her mother, the bookkeeper, went into labor in a downstairs office and almost didn’t make it up the stairs. As a kid, Velez spent evenings tucked into a booth, doing homework with a view into the bustling kitchen as servers made rounds with $20 margarita pitchers.
“When the food hit the table, people were so happy,” she says. “I fell in love with that feeling of emotion and excitement. It’s difficult to tell your immigrant mother that you don’t want to be an engineer or a doctor, you just want to be a chef, but I wanted to do it.”
It was Velez’s grandmother who “gave me all the resources I ever needed to think about and respect and use food,” she says. She split time between the Bronx and Orlando and spent summers with family in the Dominican Republic, where they had several farms. What they ate came straight from the backyard: mangos and coconuts, guava, tamarind, avocado, all cultivated by her grandma.
After graduating from Le Cordon Bleu, Velez worked as a cook and mastered chocolatier techniques from chef Jacques Torres in New York. Once in D.C., she landed gigs at Milk Bar, Arroz, and Iron Gate. At first, Velez was on the fence about pastry; she’s passionate about savory cooking and wasn’t sure she wanted to focus on sweets. Chefs like Michael Rafidi and Tony Chittum pushed her to see those talents and “run wild” on creations that combine her Dominican heritage with French and Italian cooking techniques. She applies savory skills to desserts, using tools like a fish spatula to pick up delicate layer cake or studying how different types of glucose interact with fruits for more versatility.
“I was putting guava on an Italian menu,” she says. “This gave me the voice I have now to show my fusion style with cuisines—no frills, but a little elevated. I try to let nature do most of the talking.”
Velez didn’t think twice when Onwuachi asked her to join Kith and Kin last year. Both are from the Bronx and in their 20’s and “telling two sides of the same story,” says Velez. That move pushed her desserts into an even wider spotlight. Diners came to the restaurant’s bar just for her plantain buns—pecan sticky buns layered in plantain paste and frozen cream cheese frosting she dreamed up with her five-chef team. The Thick ’Em cookie, a recipe Velez tweaked for years with dark and milk chocolate and butterscotch chunks, has also generated buzz. She first sold them at pop ups to support girls at a homeless shelter in Brooklyn, but wasn’t sure they had a place at restaurants if she wanted to be taken seriously.
“Then, it just clicked for me,” Velez says. “If it tastes delicious, it doesn’t have to have fireworks shooting out of it.”
Though it’s hard to know what the coming months will bring for chefs like Velez, she is still finding ways to be in the kitchen. Daniella Senior, the founder of Colada Shop and co-owner of Latin bar Serenata in La Cosecha market, asked Velez to collaborate on a doughnut pop up they call Doña Dona. The two met in D.C.’s New Guard Womxn in Hospitality group, a networking group that focuses on empowering women in the hospitality industry, and bonded over their shared Dominican background and their goals to lift up other women in their field.
Doña Dona doughnuts ($4.25 each or four for $16), are available for pickup at Serenata about every other week. The chefs pair the pastries with roasted rhubarb, passion fruit glaze, cinnamon chocolate ganache, and other Caribbean flavors. So far, all three doughnut drops—including one scheduled for this Saturday—have sold out. They’ll continue to announce future drops by email—it’s a good idea to sign up, since they sold out the last one in 90 minutes. A portion of the proceeds go to Ayuda DC to support undocumented and immigrant families.
The pop up is named after Velez, says Senior: Her family christened her “Doña,” which means “Miss” or “Mrs.” in Spanish and is often a sign of respect for an older woman, because she married at a young age and is known to those around her as an old soul.
“She’s one of those people that [is] a force a nature,” says Senior. “She’s not following anyone else’s path but creating her own. She’s thinking about much more than herself and incorporating the community of people she impacts and represents—recognizing there’s a lot of people looking up to her—and finding ways to make their lives better.”
Velez had turned down other offers for selling her pastries during the pandemic, because she wanted to make sure she felt motivated to do work for the right reasons. But a friend reaching out, she says, helped her get out of her funk. Kith and Kin doesn’t have a reopening date scheduled, and the upcoming award ceremonies may all be virtual. But she could make doughnuts for a cause.
“At the beginning of this, I was confused as much as everyone else was and frustrated because I know how important the industry is to the economy and how important our workers are,” says Velez. “I wanted to create an exchange. I have to continue to figure how to do this work that we were doing before, in a time where’s it’s really hard to bring peace because you don’t have peace yourself.”
